Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Mrs. Clinton's terrifying comments about rape accusations

At an event in Iowa on September 14, 2015, Hillary Clinton declared, “I want to send a message to every survivor of sexual assault . . . You have the right to be heard. You have the right to be believed and we’re with you.” She also posted the following comment on Twitter: “Every survivor of sexual assault deserves to be heard, believed, and supported.” Subsequently, someone asked her this question: “You recently came out to say that all rape victims should be believed? But would say that about Juanita Broaddrick, Kathleen Willey, and Paula Jones? Should we believe them as well?” Hillary Clinton responded: “Well, I would say that everybody should be believed at first until they are disbelieved based on evidence.”

Now Hillary Clinton is being attacked by a lot of people on the right--but not for suggesting that men and boys accused of rape should be presumed guilty. She's being attacked for being two-faced, for not automatically believing her husband’s accusers and for working to destroy their credibility. She’s being excoriated, in effect, for not being feminist enough--ironically, by the right.

It is certainly fair to highlight the hypocrisy of candidates running for president--that's what the right wants to do in this instance--and Mrs. Clinton’s call to believe rape accusers generally, but not her husband’s rape accusers, is hypocrisy no matter how it is spun. But at least some of Mrs. Clinton's detractors make it sound as if they buy into the "always believe the woman" mantra.

In a bizarre irony, the attacks on Mrs. Clinton for defending her husband echo the shrill siren of radical feminism. It reminds me of the time Jessica Valenti mocked the efforts of three mothers who founded Families Advocating for Campus Equality (FACE), an organization that seeks to raise awareness about the injustices faced by presumptively innocent college students accused of sexual misconduct. Each of the three founders of FACE has been touched directly by campus rape injustice--their sons were ensnared by it. Valenti wrote: "Alternative name for this group: Not My Nigel." Of course, "Not My Nigel" is radical feminist shorthand meaning that women who defend their male loved ones accused of rape are defending rapists.

Of course, Mrs. Clinton’s detractors are completely ignoring the terrifying elephant in the room. Mrs. Clinton's statement that we must automatically believe that every man and boy accused of rape is a rapist until evidence disproves it is self-evidently preposterous, unjust, and unworthy of even cursory, much less serious, discussion. It is the sort of insanity that animates third world dictatorships. The fact that the woman who stands a good chance of becoming the President of the United States said it and later stood by it, the fact that a lot of people believe it, and the fact that few people dare to publicly challenge it, speaks to a tyranny of political correctness run amok that we've been chronicling here for years—where grievance mongers dictate public policy; where anyone who dares to call for fairness and objectivity in rape cases is branded a woman-hater; and where long-settled principles of due process are turned on their head if the accused has a penis.

Feminists defend their puerile mantra by positing that women supposedly hardly ever lie about rape, so they insist it is fair game to assume the guilt of every man or boy accused of rape based on what happens in wholly unrelated cases. This turns Blackstone’s formulation on its head. Beyond that, too often, rape accusers get it wrong. Some lie, and some simply think non-rape is rape. Feminist Brett Sokolow, the undisputed leader of the campus sexual grievance industry, wrote that he sees "case-after-case" where "sincere victims [sic] . . . believe something has happened to them" even though "overwhelming proof" shows it did not. Mr. Sokolow suggested mental health issues may play an important factor in these wrongful accusations. Sokolow recently told Newsweek that colleges have gone "too far" in believing the accuser. Moreover, according to a poll touted by feminists to “prove” the purported college rape epidemic, a frightening percentage of young women mistake consent for rape.

Mrs. Clinton and her followers are supporting the institutionalization of misandry--where the accused are guilty by reason of penis. The fact that Clinton's hateful, insane comment is not the foremost issue in this presidential campaign tells us that we've gone beyond the tipping point, and there may be no turning back.